A Drive In The West

The truck disappears into a cluster of rock and tree and mountain. We wind around, overheat, question a 15% grade on a gravel road. A man in blue jeans saunters up to the truck. "Is that your brakes I smell?" We don't know. He nods knowingly, "Smells like brakes." He puts his hands in his jeans, looking in the distance. He spits on the ground and walks away with the same steady, languid gait. Nothing to do but just turn around and look for something beautiful.

We turn onto a long stretch of flat road with hopes to find a lake. Fields of unkempt grasses flash by, their tips silver in the setting sun. Every mile or so another ranch broadcasts its name, and then flaunts its thriving stock of horses and cattle. It all seems unending, open land for miles finally yielding to distant blue jagged mountains. Scattered birds fly overhead. I spot a magpie on a wooden fence.

A turn in the road, a shaky bridge, and then we're in the middle of an expansive farm. We pull over and spread out our lunch on a dry patch of grass. Everything seems so appropriate somehow--wind whipping across the plains, the soul-sucking heat, the quieted dirt road. I push my hair out of my face and spot a hole in the ground below me. "I bet a creature lives in here," I say. "What kind?" "Oh, I don't know. A cute rodent of some sort." We eat our cheese and squint at the expanse. I turn my back to reach for more olives and calmly rise. "There's a snake right there." Sam gets up too and spins around. "Where? A big one?" We both focus in on the party-crasher: four feet long maybe, brown and gold, its head in a permanent cock as if it may strike at any moment.

Just as I question whether or not it is poisonous, it benignly slithers away, clearly uninterested in any maleficence. Sam steals a few photographs, but none manage to expose how road weary he is. The potentially menacing cocked head, upon further inspection, seems to be stuck that way, and his mid-section looks as though it has been run over, all but escaping bifurcation. Any run-of-the-mill farm snake would snap into the defensive within a ten inch radius of a human, but this poor soul calmly skulks away without so much as a hiss.

We finish our picnic and pour ourselves back into the car; the sun has managed to steal any scrap of energy we may once have posessed. On the way home, fields and fences give way to tight knit city blocks lined with century-old brick homes. Cows and horses are replaced by bikers and herds of people waiting for the bus. Suddenly the city seems much more urban. Suddenly I realize the difference between bustle and silence.